This one’s been a long time coming. I’ve been open and honest about how much I love Nights, the slice of life slash fantasy horror Image Comics series from writer Wyatt Kennedy, artist Luigi Formisano, colorist Francesco Segala, color assists by Gloria Martinelli, letterer Maria Letizia Mirabella, and editor Alana Fox. It’s an incredible series, and one of my Comics of 2024 for a reason. But, I’ve also been open and honest about another thing: Formisano’s the highlight for me.

While everyone does incredible work in this series, this was the first time I’d ever experienced Formisano’s work, and he’s been a revelation. You know why if you’ve read it, too. There’s so much life and energy to his art, and the characters and the world they live in feel real because of what he does throughout the run. This should only be the beginning for him too, and even though I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: Formisano should be one of the biggest artists in comics, and sooner rather than later. So, with Nights’ first season just ending with last week’s 12th issue and Kennedy recently coming on Off Panel, it felt like the right time to talk with Formisano about how he does what he does. So, we did just that, as he joined me for a conversation on Zoom about his work on the series.

It’s a great chat, one that finds Formisano sharing insight on his background as an artist and comic reader, what he responds to in comics, finding his way into comics as an artist, how Nights came together, and more, before we discuss an array of pages (and one cover) from the series to date. If you’re interested in the perspective of one of the true up-and-comers in comics — even though he’s absolutely already here in all the best ways — you’ll probably dig this. But it goes without saying that I think you should read Nights. It’s pretty, pretty good.

Oh, and one last note: This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Let’s get to it.

Let’s start with the basics. Why comics? What made you want to draw comics for a living?

Formisano: I always was drawn to comics. I loved comics since I was a child. I’ve been drawing for forever. I don’t think I was two years old when I started drawing. And so, in Italy, Disney comics and Mickey Mouse comics are super popular. They still are. And so, I started with those, and that’s all I wanted to do.

When did you move to Glasgow from Italy?

Formisano: I moved in 2017.

Why did you end up moving? Was it partially because of your desire to work in comics?

Formisano: I can work on comics wherever I want, and I work digitally. So honestly, I could go to Hawaii. I should go to Hawaii. But I always wanted to live abroad. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Italy. I love Italy. I’m always there. But I just wanted to see other places.

I talk about this with people all the time, particularly with writers, but it’s true of artists too. Expanding the places you see and the things you do helps you become a better creator.

Formisano: Yeah, exactly. I like to believe I’m a social person, so I like to meet new people. I think that helps if you are a creative person professionally.

You were reading Disney comics early on. That is a very common tale for artists from Europe, in my experience. But what was the appeal of the medium to you both as a reader and then eventually as an artist? Was there something in specific that just clicked as far as comics were concerned?

Formisano: I don’t think I ever had a moment when it clicked because it was always something in my life. I always seen stuff in comics I couldn’t see anywhere else. Just the storytelling side. In a movie, it’s just pictures and sound. In a book, it’s just words. Which are perfect, right? But in comics you can do so much more. Just with the composition alone, and you can play with the reader as well. So, there’s this kind of partnership, and it’s amazing. As a medium, it’s so different from anything else, and that’s captivating for me.

Is there an example of something that made you feel like that? It doesn’t have to be from back then, it can be more recent where you see the potential in comics.

Formisano: I had the moment more than once, for sure. The John Romita, Jr. and J. Michael Straczynski Amazing Spider-Man run was one. It was like, “Oh wow, you can do this kind of stuff in comics?” Or Blankets or Maus. You can do so much more in comics. You can be serious, you can be cartoonish, you can be silly, you can be both. You can be everything at once. It’s amazing. You can do stuff like Asterios Polyp. It’s amazing. Imagine an adaptation of Asterios Polyp. It would be so bad. To make a good adaptation of Asterios Polyp, you would need to change everything for the movie, basically.

Those are good examples, but with both Asterios Polyp and Blankets, there’s a lot of stuff that happens outside of our idea of traditional reality. It’s happening in a way that works on the page, but you couldn’t visualize it in other mediums in a way that would make sense, narratively speaking. But it makes sense in comics, so I totally get what you’re saying.

Formisano: In comics, there’s a lot of stuff you don’t have to explain, structure-wise. In Asterios Polyp or Maus, readers get it. If you did the same stuff in a TV show or in a movie, you have to make a couple of scenes to get the audience used to your kind of storytelling, basically. And in comics, it’s just really straightforward, and that’s amazing.

How did you decide you first wanted to become a comic artist? And what was your path to actually getting work?

Formisano: I always knew, but I never even told myself out loud, “I want to be a comic book artist.” It’s weird. It’s hard to explain. I knew, but I never thought, oh yeah, I’m going to do comics. I knew I wanted to be an artist. My path is very boring. (laughs) I have a lot of friends, like, Italians with an exciting background, like fan zines and all that kind of stuff. And my career is pretty boring. I was ready to move to Scotland so I went to my last comic con in Naples, which is one of the best, in my opinion. And I brought my portfolio with me, and I met Luca Maresca, who is an artist that is doing Marvel stuff right now.

He’s great.

Formisano: He’s great. He’s my master, basically. (laughs) He’s a god to me. He’s so nice in person. He’s one of those people that you can only describe as kind. So, I met him, and he looks at my stuff and was like, “Oh, I have to show this to be talent scout/writer for Bonelli.” Bonelli is the biggest publisher in Italy. It does a lot of different comics and genres, and at the moment they were making Star Wars esque comics. He thought I was perfect for it, so I jumped in to this adventure.

So, according to Wyatt, you guys met on Instagram and you had been developing varying projects. What was it about the idea of Nights in specific that spoke to you once that one was on the table?

Formisano: Let me start by saying that anything that Wyatt said…it’s not true. It’s a lie.

I believe it. (laughs)

Formisano: Just listen to me. (laughs) Trust me. But what spoke to me in Nights was the characters. He discovered me on Instagram and reached out to me via email, and he had these three proposals, and they were great. But the characters in Nights were alive. It was a big project. It wasn’t fully developed yet. But the characters were alive. Even though they were just an idea, I could see them in my mind. So that made me think, “Okay, that’s a great writer” and “I want to work with you.”

Do you think character first?

Formisano: Not always. Sometimes I like to think about the plot first and what I want to say in this specific scene or in this specific story as a whole. But with Nights, the characters were so powerful to me that I needed to make that.

Let’s start with a three-page sequence from issue #3. I bring it up every time I talk about this series, and it finds Grayson enjoying a hot beverage before chaos reigns. I love it. What is your process once you get a script from Wyatt?

Formisano: We did a lot of work at first about the characters and where we want them to go and the start and end game. That allowed us to have this kind of sandbox for the stories. So, starting from that, after we talk about the single issue, I already have some kind of image in my mind that I want to bring. So when I get the script, it’s really a straightforward process. It’s like being on a slide in a waterpark. And for these pages, for example, we knew we wanted the kind of Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli vibe where you get those chill moments of pause from anything crazy going on. And there’s a lot of crazy shit in Nights. (laughs) So, we as fans of Nights, because we like our own stuff of course, we felt like we needed this pause, these moments where time stands still.

I mean, that is a pretty common thing in Nights.

Formisano: These moments bring us as a creators and I guess as readers as well bring us closer to the characters. That’s why we like it.

I talked to Wyatt about this, but I think sometimes people look at things like this as…I don’t want to say a waste of space, but they don’t add to the plot, and some readers are very plot oriented. But I think in a lot of ways it’s the quiet moments that make Nights special. And part of the reason they work is because you’re good at them. How do you make those moments stand out as an artist and make them feel important to the characters? Because I think there’s a version of this where they don’t necessarily.

Formisano: Actually, you made me remember a moment when you said that a lot of readers are plot oriented. I remember when I was reading in my ex’s university, I was reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and there were two or three pages where there were just a couple of balloons, and I was there for hours. And a friend of ours was like, “Just move the page already!” (David laughs) Because of course she was saying, oh, okay, the comic is the balloons, right? You have to read the balloons and move on to the next page. Where of course, as an artist, I was looking at the composition and breathing it in the moment and experiencing it in I believe in a fuller way. It’s always funny for me because you’re right. A lot of people see comics as very plot oriented.

I think you succeed in these kind of moments…I don’t think I succeed with these moments. I like these moments, and I like to do it this way. Basically, if you play with the camera, you can say to the reader, “Okay, this is a different scene from the action or a dialogue scene or whatever that you’ve seen before, and you’re going to see to read after.” If you zoom out a little bit the camera or zoom in sometimes, and the composition as well, that helps. You can slow down the pacing and the rhythm.

I think a lot of it comes down to the fact you like them. Another thing I feel you like bringing specific locations to life. You make them feel real. There’s a version where this is just a train that looks like a train inside, and that’d be fine. But the fact that it’s a library also and it’s got the curved walls on the bottom of the fourth panel and bookcases in the second panel… I am not sure you needed to make Loco Latte look so cool, but I’m glad you did. Is developing locations something you enjoy?

Formisano: Oh, I love it. For me, these are just another kind of character. You know what I mean? And it’s so funny because Nights started very realistic as a vibe, as an atmosphere, as a mood. It’s in St. Petersburg in Florida. It wasn’t another city at first. But then we started going…there was a lot in the real world that we didn’t like. So, we were like, “Okay, we are doing our own book. We should be having fun doing this.” So page after page, we changed the city into Santo Pedro. And when I get the moment to actually change something like the pier or this cafe bar, it’s always over the top. I don’t know if you saw the crocodile cinema.

I don’t remember that.

Formisano: There’s a crocodile drive in cinema. It’s shaped like a crocodile or an alligator. We want to have fun ourselves, and it’s cool to make this kind gothic and Studio Ghibli backgrounds. It’s fun for us.

Next page, I want to start with the first page on the left’s final panel. That really stands out because of how your art and Francesco’s colors and Maria Letizia Mirabella’s letters combine, and it’s such a tonal change for Grayson who’s actually been a lovable scamp so far. We haven’t really gotten any violence from her up until this point. But here, you have this shadow over her eyes, and then Francesco puts the red glow in there and Maria puts the red text and the bad dog in there, and it goes from a lovable slice of life story to horror murder manga fast. In terms of that final panel, what made that the right answer for the character in the moment?

Formisano: Basically, what we know is what Gray knows at this point in time in the story. So, we knew we wanted her to be like…she’s not surprised to facing the wolf, but she’s surprised to see this way and see it turn into this kind of vicious fight, basically. And we knew we wanted this kind of reaction from her.

It works really well, but it is a complete tonal shift. It starts with the crack, where you get the speed lines of the parking meter comes out of the ground, and then like I said, it goes from slice of life to “We’re about to have a serious action sequence.” It really sets it apart, and I love it.

Formisano: For us, storytelling wise, we don’t want to put a spotlight on a certain scene. So, for example, we want to start doing some battle shonen shit, these kind of fights…and we just do it. We don’t start building up for the moment if it’s something that needs to be out of the blue. If you want to build up for a moment, we do it. But if we need this kind of sudden change of genre, we just do it. We don’t think about it too much. We know what we want from the characters and from their own internal struggle, so that allows us to just play with the scenes and the characters and the genre.

The second page works perfectly, but there’s a lot going on. When it comes to interpreting the scripts, how free are you to just find the right solutions on the page?

Formisano: Often, we talk about what’s the right way to portray a scene. And sometimes for fight scenes, Wyatt writes…I don’t think he did it for this one, but more often than not, he just writes, “Make something cool. This needs to happen but make it badass.” And then we talk and we reach a conclusion. But yeah, we are both free. He’s free to change something, and I’m free to tell him, “Okay, this is shit. We need to rewrite this.” And he’s free to say, “We need to make a new scene and redraw this kind of stuff because this scene doesn’t work visually.” So there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of freedom for both of us.

It feels like that. Sometimes with writers, they have tight scripts and a vision for pages. I like having the artists find the right answers, because you probably think in a visual way that Wyatt doesn’t necessarily, and that allows you to bring this to life a much different way.

Formisano: A lot of times he says something that sparks my creativity. Sometimes I say something that made him go like, “Oh shit, I didn’t think about it. Let’s do it this way then.” And it is great. I think one of the first things that I told Wyatt is that I have in the past worked in comics where you’re just a small gear in a bigger machine. Ad that’s fine. But this is our stuff. We need to be able to talk about everything and just share our ideas. Even if they’re bad, we need to just share stuff and put it out there. That’s why we are great friends. We talk every day. And that’s why Nights is the way it is.

Do you have a general approach to action sequences, or is it all dependent on what’s happening? Because obviously a fight between a dog and a vampire is going to be slightly different than one between two regular people. Do you have a general approach, or is it very situational based on what the action sequence is?

Formisano: Well, my first approach is to understand, “What do we need to share with the readers? What does the reader need to understand from this scene?” So, if we need to portray that a character is raging in a sad way or conflicted, and there’s subtext about…let’s say they are angry too with their friend, and then I start fighting another person…the reader needs to understand this kind of conflict.

So, I start with that, and then I need to be like, “Okay, does this fight scene need to be badass? Does it need to be cool? Or does it need to be sad?” So yeah, I start just with storytelling. If I start from a blank page, “Okay, let’s do character A fights character B, it just too blank and generic.” I get there, but I get there slowly. Instead, if I start thinking, “Okay, what do we need to say story-wise?” It’s easier for me.

That makes sense.

Formisano: Does it? (laughs)

Absolutely. Personal versus just generically badass is going to have a different feel to it because it’s going to change the tone of it. And if it’s going to be personal, it’s going to be emotional in a different way. I don’t want to get into it because it’s spoilers for people who haven’t read it, but when I first read that fight, I was like, “Well, this is just her fighting this crazy dog.” Now that I know who the dog is, that changes it dramatically. It becomes personal in two different ways because the director’s death and the identity of the dog. It makes it complicated. So, it does make sense.